Happy early Chrismukkah

I recently finished a re-watch of The O.C., a show I hadn't seen since it aired on TV, about twenty years ago. Even though I watched it in real time (from 2003-2007), I barely remembered anything about the last two seasons; hell, I barely remembered anything about the second season. The first season was the one I had the most memories of. I wanted to share some thoughts/bullet points with you about this show. Also, I'm writing this assuming you're already familiar with the show! And without further ado, California, Californiaaaaa, here we coooommmme! 

1. Seth and Summer are almost two entirely different people in the first episode - The premiere of the entire series is good, but it's shocking to see how different Seth and Summer are, compared to what they eventually become. Seth just comes across socially awkward and not having any friends. Here, it seems like he has no friends because he's a shy, nerdy kid, but really, people don't like him because he's a bit of a douche. He becomes very confident and he's a proud nerd. You could chalk it up to him getting confident because of Ryan, but yeah, I don't think so. I think they just changed his character to fit in better with the series. By the next episode he becomes the "cool" Seth we all know and love...or love to hate.  Summer is just awful in the premiere. I have no idea why Seth would even like her. Yes, she's pretty, okay (but we're talking about a place where everyone is attractive), but God, what a bitch! Granted, she is funny sometimes. ("Chino? Eww!") She's a total whoo girl, just "whooing" the entire time and being annoying and drunk. She literally leaves a drunk and passed out Marissa on her porch when she can't find the keys to get into her house. And yes, Summer is a bit superficial, but she is also a good person as the rest of the series goes on. In this episode, she's just a superficial bitch. I think they needed to change both their characters drastically for them to get together. If I was watching this for the first time and knew they ended up together, I would be very confused by the first episode! 

2. Seth and Summer's relationship happened way too fast - Since we're on the subject of Seth and Summer.... I think this would have been better if it was a slow burn. Not too slow, though! This series was only four seasons, after all. I would have had them get together in season 2 instead of season 1. I looked up to see when they first started dating and it's episode 20. Summer was well aware of his feelings for her, but he was dating Anna. In fact, wasn't he dating both of them at the same time on the sly, but they both found out, so he chose Anna? Which makes no sense because he's been pining for Summer since 6th grade or whenever. I would have just had Seth date Anna, thinking he has no shot with Summer whatsoever, then they can become friends through Ryan and Marissa and get to know each other that way. Start season 2 with Summer dating Zach and Anna still leaving to go back to Pittsburgh. I would still have Seth and Zach work on their comic books and then Summer will see the drawing Seth did of her for the comic book and she sees how much he likes her and that's how they start dating. Yes, it would change some things around, but I always thought they got together way too fast. The first time they have sex, it just felt like they were doing it to get it over with. It wasn't sweet or romantic or cutely romantic or even awkward (well, maybe it was a tad awkward)...it was just..boring. 

Also, I have to give a shout out to Captain Oats and Princess Sparkles, Seth's plastic horse and Summer's My Little Pony, respectively. Princess Sparkles' name is actually Princess Sparkles; I looked this pony up to make sure. She's from the Princess Ponies set. I had Princess Pristina myself. 

3. Anna had the worst fashion sense - Ugh, what was this girl thinking? LOL, I found a reddit thread with somebody asking, "Does anybody not really love Anna's fashion sense?" Uh, yep...me! Now some people do like her style (huh?), but I had to post some of the comments that made me chuckle:

She must have pissed off someone in wardrobe who did their best to punish her.

Her style gives me Disney channel vibes.

It's like they put all the leftover options on her and called it a style. (This person likes it, though.)

Her style was over the top, way more than other kids.

The girl likes lots of colors and newsboy hats (sometimes pink, fuzzy newsboy caps) and she believes in layering, but, not like in a good way. Here are a few examples of the atrocious outfits she has worn: 

-Black shirt with a sparkly pink tube top over it, olive green skirt with a chunky black belt and tan boots that go up to her knees. Just terrible.

-Fuzzy pink newsboy camp, black shirt with collar, purple top over the black shirt, white skirt, electric blue leggings, and a pale purple coat. Is she colorblind? This outfit was especially egregious. I could only find a picture of her wearing it when she's sitting down, but I wish you could see all of it in it fugly glory:

-A yellow t-shirt over a long-sleeved pink shirt with a blue knit scarf. Remember, this live in SoCal. Why the scarf? She's also wearing a blue bracelet or watch over the sleeve of the pink shirt. She looks like an absolute idiot. 

-A shiny pink coat over a black top (you can't see too much of it because the coat is zipped up most of the way. This isn't too bad, but then they show a full body shot of her and we see she's also wearing a brown skirt with a black belt, purple tights, and pink shoes. Like, WTF? Unfortunately (fortunately?, you can't see the pink shoes in this pic:

-A silk pink camisole overalls white t-shirt. I guess this is supposed to be her sexy bedtime wear. 

-A pink top with a sheer neckline and the rest of it looks like a cheap polyester material with a black floral skirt. And let's not forget the blue tights and gold strappy shoes. Again, I ask, if she colorblind? 

-An ivory satiny short sleeved top that seems to tie and button down the front (question mark?) over a red and white striped long sleeved shirt. At least she paired this with black pants instead of some crazy color.

-A black and white geometric dress (which isn't too bad on its own) with a long sleeved pink shirt under it and lilac tights. 

-Brown jacket with white polka dots over a white top with designs I cannot decipher, plus a blue tiered ruffled skirt and pink tights. Seriously, WTF? 

4. There are plenty of meta jokes in the series, but one of my favorites is a reference to The Sixth Sense - Okay, so I can't quite remember the context, but I think Seth must have gotten really drunk and threw up and when Ryan brings it up to him the next day, Seth wants to know how much he vomited and asks if it was as much "as the little girl in The Sixth Sense." Mischa Barton, who plays Marissa Cooper in The O.C., played PukeGirl in The Sixth Sense. (Her character's name is Kyra Collins, but I've always called her PukeGirl...that scene was terrifying! And a bit gross with the vomit.)

5. The Spider-Man kiss was one of the most contrived scenes - This kiss between Seth and Summer happens in a season 2 episode from 2005; the movie it was inspired by came out in 2002. I feel like by that time it was old news. Yeah, I guess you could say it's an iconic scene in the movie, but the way it happens on The O.C. just, ugh, I'm sorry, I hate it. It didn't come organically at all and I think that's why it irritated me. It was like they (the writers) wanted Seth and Summer to recreate the famous kiss between Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst in Spider-Man because Seth is a comic book nerd, but the way they got there, :::rolls eyes:::  (Oh, wait I just realized I could have just used this emoji: 🙄, but there's something so nostalgic and familiar about the first way I wrote it. I think I learned it from TWoP; iykyk.) They had broken up at the beginning of season 2 and Summer has been dating Zach. She's supposed to be going to Italy with Zach and his family for his sister's wedding. 

Keep in mind that it's raining quite hard during this episode and because Seth hates wearing hats, he's wears a Spider-Man mask (it's more of a head piece as it goes over the entire head) if he has to go outside which is the dumbest thing I've ever ever heard of. Seriously, he would rather wear that ridiculous Spider-man mask that just wear a hat? See, this is already stretching it. 

He's watching TV when the cable goes out, so he decides to climb up to the roof to fix the satellite which just seems really stupid because 1) it's POURING and 2) does he even know what to do? Oh, and 3) he's also the only one home. What if something happens and he falls? Which is exactly what happens...he's tied a rope around his waist and after he ties the other end to the chimney, he slips off the roof...he's lucky he didn't break his neck. Meanwhile, Summer has left the airport because she's decided she wants to be with Seth and she finds him hanging upset down like an idiot (keep in mind he's wearing his Spider-Man mask...which would seem it would hinder his vision) and they recreate the Sam Raimi Spider-Man kiss. I literally groaned when I saw this. Instead of copying an iconic kiss, I'd rather them just create their own iconic kiss. Plus, it's just so unrealistic that Seth would do this on a sunny day, let alone when it's pouring outside. Please. 

6. Marissa shouldn't have been expelled from Harbor for shooting Trey - She shot him in self-defense, okay? And it's not like he died. In case you need refreshing, Trey is Ryan's older brother (the one who stole the car in the first episode) and he's recently been released from jail. Because he's her boyfriend's brother, Marissa has been really nice to him, helping him find a place to live and look for a job. Unfortunately, Trey takes this niceness as a sign that Marissa is into him, but that isn't the case. He gets very aggressive and starts to assault her when they're alone at a beach, but she's able to hit him with some object (maybe a stick; I don't remember) and runs away. For some reason, she doesn't tell Ryan about this. I guess she doesn't want him to know that his brother tried to rape her. Of course (a few episodes down the line), Ryan does find out and he goes to Trey's place to beat the sh*t out of him. Marissa finds out and follows Ryan and arrives at Trey's place to see the two brothers going at it. She's afraid that Trey is going to kill Ryan because he has him pinned down and is strangling him so she grabs a gun and shoots Trey. Like I said, he doesn't even die so it's not like she's some stone-cold killer. She was just trying to get Trey to stop hurting (or possibly worse) Ryan. 

Actually, both she and Ryan were expelled from Harbor, but Sandy was able to get Ryan back into Harbor. But I thought it was ridiculous that Marissa was kicked out. They really only did this for the storyline.

7. Seth lying to Summer about not getting into Brown infuriated me - So Seth's dream school is Brown and Summer decides she's going to apply too because maybe they'll both get in. Seth reminds her that usually only one person from Harbor gets in (which is insane they have a representative from Brown if only one person is going to get in...). Well, Summer gets in and Seth does not. Seth lies and tells everyone he did get in. He thinks he can just convince the dean orsomeone to let him in. (That does not work.) Instead of admitting to Summer he didn't get in, he keeps up the charade that he did. He does this because he's worried that Summer won't go so she can be closer to him, but let's be honest, while he may think that, he's just embarrassed that she got in and he didn't. He tells her that he decides he doesn't want to go and breaks up with her. Poor Summer was so devastated and wondered what she did wrong when he couldn't admit the truth. Terrible play on Seth's part. 

8. Julie Cooper needs to branch out her dating circle - I get that this is a TV show, but what is up with Julie only dating (or marrying) people who are related to her friends of her daughter's friends? After she divorced Jimmy she married Caleb, Kirsten's father. Then after he died, she dated Neil Roberts, Summer's dad and they got engaged rather quickly. Let's be honest: we love Julie, but the woman is a gold digger. Even though she liked Neil well enough, I never believed she loved him, she rather just loved his money and his huge mansion. That relationship didn't last and then she started dating the Bullitt, the only person who wasn't related to someone she knew. Even though Bullitt was a billionaire, she broke off her romance with him to be with (and this came out of left field) Frank Atwood, Ryan's father, who was recently released from jail. (Ryan sure has a lot of family members who have been in jail!) This relationship just happened and it made no sense...it really didn't have time to cook. They have a baby together, but they're not together romantically at the end of the series, just friends. That relationship was a real WTF moment...like Julie, I love you, but maybe let's not get involved with your dead daughter's ex-boyfriend's absentee con father. Also I know people change and blah, blah, blah, but wasn't he in jail for beating his then wife? Julia, you can do so much better.

9. I predicted one of the storylines before they revealed it to us - Okay, so I probably shouldn't brag about this, because I'm sure many viewers saw this coming as well as it was really obvious (at least to me!). In season 2, we find out that Caleb (Kirsten's father; Seth's grandfather) had an affair, oh, like sixteen years ago when he was married and that resulted in a child. He's been paying the woman child support (and also paying her to keep this quiet).  

Meanwhile...a new student named Lindsay starts at Harbor. At first, she and Ryan don't get on the right foot, but soon they start dating. (This happens during one of the 925 times when Ryan and Marissa are broken up.) One day she comes over to his house and the woman that Caleb had a child with also is over to talk to Caleb about something...I don't really remember, but the point is that I knew that the woman was the mother of Lindsay! And I was right! That means Lindsay is Kristen's half-sister, which means Ryan is dating his adoptive half-aunt (is that right?), bwah! Okay, I'm not sure if by that point in the series if Sandy and Kirsten have officially adopted him (according to a quick search on Google, I guess they never do, but they are his legal guardians? :::shrug::: (or I guess I can just type this: 🤷) but still, that's a little too incestuous for me. I know Ryan and Kirsten aren't really related, but it's still a little weird. Oh, well, by the end of the season Lindsay will move to Chicago and will never be brought up again. 

10. I preferred Kaitlin over Marissa (and I preferred Willa Holland's Kaitlin over Shailene Woodley's) - Even though we see a very young Kaitlin in season 1 (hi, Shailene Woodley!), she doesn't come back as a series regular until the last season (and we do see her in a couple episodes in season 3). She goes off to boarding school in season 2, hence why we never see her. She went as Shailene Woodley and came back as Willa Holland, ha! (Though Shailene Woodley got a pretty decent acting career, so I'm sure she got over the fact that she wasn't re-cast.) While I knew Kaitlin would return to the show, I forgot what her character is like. She's pretty much non-existent in the first season, just Marissa's little sister. I think they just sent her off to boarding school because they didn't know what to do with her. Really, Marissa would probably be better off at boarding school! I thought when Kaitlin returned, she would be a Mean Girl type - very exclusive who she was friends with, looked down her nose at other people, flaunted her wealth, but I must have misremembered because she wasn't like that at all. She doesn't really care about being friends with all the popular kids; her only friends seem to be Luke's younger twin brothers who follow her around like puppies. She makes them do her homework. Unlike Marissa, who liked to be involved in school and was a pretty good student, Kaitlin could care less about that. There's a scene where a true Mean Girl (played by Ashley Benson; you may remember her as Hanna in Pretty Little Liars) is having a party at her house, but she's only inviting certain people. She actually hands out invitations to a group of eager girls, leaving several out who are disappointed they didn't get an invitation. Kaitlin is in the background when this is going on and she pipes up and tells everyone she's having a party the same night and that EVERYONE is invited. Of course, everyone ends up at her house (including Mean Girl's super hot (and super gay, heh (and yes, Mean Girl definitely knew he was gay)) boyfriend. Anyway, I think I just preferred Kaitlin's casual (sometimes she was too casual!) vibe over Marissa. Marissa was just SO DRAMATIC! I get it; it's a teen soap. It wouldn't be very exciting if she was a stable person, but seriously, that girl just exhausted me! 

BONUS - If you ever watch (or re-watch) this show, I would recommend listening to the podcast Keeping Up with the Cohens. Yes, there is the podcast that Melinda Clarke and Rachel Bilson did and that's a good one too. I've only listened to select episodes of their podcasts, mostly when they have someone else who was on the show or show runners. Keeping Up with the Cohens is hosted by three friends who loved this show when it aired when they were teens. They do pretty in-depth reviews and also have a segment where they choose the song of the episode (because there were so many songs that played in one episode!) and an outfit of the episode. The first season they would do four episodes (they were watching the DVD boxed set and so were going by how many episodes were on one disc), but then they did two episodes per podcast episode and I preferred that. They're just a lot of fun to listen to. The O.C. is a great show to do a recap review on because it's only four seasons (and the last season is shortened). I find a lot of television show recap reviews will eventually fade away over time before they finish the series after the first three or so seasons. 

Taking a Stroll Down Wisteria Lane

Disclaimer: I apologize for how terrible this looks. Blogger can really aggravating sometimes. Something happened with the format and I have tried to fix it to make it look better, but it's not working, so I apologize again for how terrible this looks! 

If anyone were to ask me what my favorite TV show is, I would tell them it's Breaking Bad. However, there are many other TV series I love and if I had to make a top ten list of my favorite TV shows, I would struggle. (I would have to do different categories like dramas, comedies, reality shows, etc. to fit them all in!) One show that would definitely make that list is Desperate Housewives. I guess it would be in my favorite dramas list, though it technically is a comedy too. I recently did a re-watch and wanted to write down some of my thoughts. 

First, let me talk about my history. I watched this in real time, but I wasn't there from the beginning. I either started watching in the middle of season 1 and caught up with it later or I started watching at season 2 and caught up with season 1. I remember going to Blockbuster (ask your ancestors (lol, I heard this joke on a podcast and have been waiting a long time to steal it)) and renting the season 1 DVDs. I'm not sure why I didn't use Netflix (like the archaic Netflix when they used to mail the physical DVDs to you....lol who remembers that?) because this would have been during the time I was using archaic Netflix to watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Alias. (Why do I remember such dumb useless stuff? Probably because it's dumb useless stuff I love.)

Anyway, it was actually my dad who got me into the show because he told me about it. (Both he and my mom watched it.) I think he watched it because he liked Teri Hatcher, haha. I remember watching Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman with my parents. (I had to look up the title because I couldn't remember it exactly.) So I started watching it and was hooked. When the series ended in 2012, I decided to do a re-watch, but I only got through season 4 before I decided to take a break since the series just ended and wanted to give it a little more space before I re-watched the last four seasons. Well, I didn't start my re-watch until late last year so I just ended up watching the entire series again, so I've seen seasons 1-4 three times and 5-8 twice. In a way, it was like watching the later seasons for the first time since so much timed had passed. There were literally only two things I remembered from the last season (which I'll tell you later). DH is one of those rare shows that can make me laugh and cry during the same episode. 

Much like I did with my Felicity post, I will be sharing some thoughts/bullet points about this show. And there will be SPOILERS! I will be talking about who dies, who gets together, who's cheating on who, all the mysteries, you name it! I will also be talking about the show assuming you're familiar with it. I highly recommend this show if you've never seen it. It's very simple (but oh-so-complicated!): It takes place in the seemingly idyllic neighborhood of Wisteria Lane and follows those who live in the neighborhood, namely Susan Mayer (Teri Hatcher), Lynette Scavo (Felicity Huffman), Bree Van de Kamp (Marcia Cross), and Gaby Solis (Eva Longoria). There are other people (and housewives!) who live in this neighborhood too, but those ladies are the core four.

1. The houses - The houses on Wisteria Lane are their own characters in their own right. The four main women live in the same homes for the entire run (save for the season when Susan has to rent her house out and move to an apartment because of financial issues). You have Lynette's green painted house with the floating cabinets in the kitchen and the living room with the blue painted walls. It actually reminds me of a house you would be able to select in the Sims 3 Generations pack, you know one of those family houses. 

Susan's yellow "barn style cottage home" (I'm quoting the wiki, fyi) has a very cozy vibe and it feels like an artist lives there (which Susan is) and I associate the interior with those molded columns. 

The colonial brick house that is immaculate inside with the beautiful furniture (and that kitchen!) fits Bree very well.

I'm jealous of Gabby's huge walk-in closet and the beautiful tub in her bathroom that's attached to her bedroom in her yellow Victorian house. I also like the peach-y color of the living room wall. The only thing I'm not crazy about is the painting of the Virgin Mary with baby Jesus in that HUGE ornate frame that hung above the wallpaper. It was just a bit much. Also, did it annoy anyone else that their dining table and chairs were like RIGHT THERE next to the front door?

 Even the houses that were owned by multiple people over the seasons had their own personality. Every time I saw the house with the staircase directly in front of the front door and the dark wood paneling interior, I thought of Katherine Mayfair (even though she only lived in it for three seasons). 

A not-so-glamorous Gaby

2. The fashion - There's a YouTube channel I'm subscribed to called ModernGurlz where sometimes the videos will be about the fashion in a particular movie. I don't know if any TV shows have ever been talked about, but I would love a deep dive for the fashion in Desperate Housewives. It is eight seasons and there are A LOT of outfits, so it would be a bit of a commitment, but it would be so interesting. Even I, a person who knows nothing about fashion, could tell that the characters (especially the core four, plus a couple others) have their own fashion style and it evolves as their characters evolve. Gaby, the former model and fashionista is always wearing something sexy, chic, trendy, expensive, or all of the above! She gets her hair done regularly and wears make-up. When she has kids, she starts wearing more practical clothes and keeps her hair cut short because she doesn't have time (or the money because this is during a time when Carlos isn't raking in the big bucks) to keep it up and she wears very minimum make up.

When she's a stay-at-home mom, Lynette wears a lot of t-shirts or button up shirts, but when she goes back to work, she has a more professional look. Bree has a preppy look with her argyle and solid colored cashmere sweaters and slacks. In the first season, she wears pearls and has her hair flipped up, but as the series goes on, her hair isn't so rigid all the time and she does lose the pearls at some point (or only wears them for special occasions). When she becomes super successful with the launch of her cookbook, she starts wearing these amazing tweed jacket and skirts (I'm guessing they're Chanel). Susan has a very relaxed, casual look and wears a lot of henley shirts and jeans. 

3. I loved the time jump - At the beginning of the fifth season, the show jumps ahead five years and it was such a smart idea. It gave the show some fresh perspectives and storylines. The audience was teased at the very end of the season 4 finale. We saw that Bree had published a cookbook and had become super successful. The four kids who played Lynette's kids have been swapped out for older actors (although we won't see them until next season) and now twins Porter and Preston are 16-ish, Parker is 12/13-ish, and little Penny is 8 or 9. To be honest, I'm never really sure what the age difference between the Scavo children are or even how old they're ever supposed to be. I swear, in the last season, in one episode they said that Penny was 9; then in another, she was mentioned as being 11. A fun reveal is that we see the usual glamorous Gaby is not wearing make up and wearing more practical clothes as we see she now has two young girls, Juanita and Cecelia. I already alluded this about her change in fashion and her looks. The most shocking reveal is when we see Susan come home (oh, I should mention that during season 4 she was married to Mike and they had their son, MJ) and she's greeting someone who you think is Mike...but it's not!! It's some other guy who is NOT Mike and she greets him with a passionate kiss. Right away, you're thinking, what the HELL is going on? Did Mike die? If so, what happened? Did they get separated or divorced? If so, WHY? Another use of the time jump is that they used the five years to have Orson be in prison for running over Mike, the hit and run that caused Mike to be in a coma from season 3. And they also used it to have Edie move away, then come back in season 5. 

4. There are storylines from the first two seasons that they bring back for the penultimate and final seasons - There are two storylines in particular I'm thinking of. In the seventh episode of the first season, Andrew (Bree's teenage son) accidentally runs over Carlo's mother, resulting with her ending up in a coma. Carlos is distraught, but this couldn't have been better timing for Gaby because just before Mama Solis (as everyone calls her) got ran over, she had caught Gaby in a compromising position with John Rowland, the young gardener, and was on her way to tell her son. Mama Solis does eventually wake up, but only to quickly die when she falls down the stairs. She takes Gaby's secret to the grave with her (though, as we all know, Carlos does find out about his wife's affair). No one is none the wiser who hit her as Bree and Rex have disposed of any evidence.

Fast forward to season 7 where some circumstances have happened and Bree confides in Gaby what happened all those years ago (taking the time jump into account, nine years would have passed if I'm doing my math right). When Carlos finds out, he is more angry at Bree since she was the adult who covered this up and accepts Andrew's apology, knowing he was just a kid. 

Another storyline from season 1 that will come back later in the series is after Paul Young has strangled nosy neighbor Martha Huber, and her sister, Felicia Tilman, KNOWS he did it but can't get any proof. In the second season, this crazy b**ch frames him for her own murder by cutting off two of her fingers and planting them in the trunk of his car, not to mention dripping blood all over his kitchen. (She used to be a nurse so she knew how to pump her blood and save it.) This is one unhinged woman, I tell you! I know it doesn't look good for Paul that they find two human fingers in his car, but does that really prove that he killed someone? But he's carted off to jail and stays there for ten years (or about that) until Felicia (who has been living off the grid under another name) gets a ticket for speeding (or something stupid like that) and they find out who she really is and she is sent to prison and Paul is released. Then we get our season 7 storyline from that and things will get resolved in that season (with Felicia still trying to get justice for her sister AND still trying to get revenge on Paul Young: i.e. killing him). 

5. Trying to solve the mysteries - When I rewatched the first four seasons, I had pretty much remembered the gist of the mystery for each season since this was my third time watching those seasons. I may have forgotten small details, but for the most part I recalled who was behind them (like I remembered Katherine's daughter had been replaced in season 4). Since it had been several years since watching the last four seasons and it felt like I was watching them for the first time again, I decided to see if I could guess the mystery. And for the most part, I did. Now I don't know if this is because I had remembered them deep down or if they were just obvious. Personally, I think it's the latter! GET READY FOR SOME MAJOR SPOILERS! (Like I already haven't spoiled things already!) 

Season 5 - So we quickly learn that Susan and Mike are divorced and the reason for this is because something awful happened: they were driving home one night and got into a terrible car accident that left the woman and her very young daughter in the other car dead. Edie has moved back to the lane and is now married to a man named Dave. Dave seemed very insistent about moving to Wisteria Lane and right away I knew that the woman and little girl who died in the horrific car accident were his wife and child...and I was right. 

Season 6 - There's two mysteries going on simultaneously. One is that there's a mysterious new family that just moved onto the lane (pretty much what Wisteria Lane is known for!) and the other is the Fairview Strangler. Young women are being found strangled to death. One of these is Julie Mayer, though she doesn't die. (They're not going to kill off Susan's daughter!) At first, we're supposed to think it's the husband or the teenage son of the Bolens, the new family on the lane, especially after a waitress at a cafe was found dead and Nick (the husband) was the last person to be seen at the cafe, but I knew it wasn't either of them because that was too obvious. We see a few scenes with some of the young cast hanging out: Julie, the Scavo twins, Danny (the teen son of the Bolens), Ana (Gaby's niece who's living with her and Carlos for the time being), and some random kid named Eddie. Even though Danny and Ana are new characters, we know why they're characters this season. Eddie just seems to show up from nowhere. He's friends with the Scavo twins, but we've never seen him before or heard him mentioned before. After seeing him in a couple of scenes, I knew he was the Fairview Strangler...and I was right! 

Season 7 - This one I think I remembered it vaguely from watching it the first time, though some people might think it was obvious. I didn't think it was as obvious as the other two. Paul Young is back on Wisteria Lane after getting released from jail when it's revealed
he didn't murder Felicia Tilman who had him framed for her murder (though he did murder her sister, but was never convicted for it). He has a new wife, Beth. Around the second or third time she mentioned her mother, it's like a memory unlocked for me and I vaguely remembered her being Felicia's daughter - and I was right!

Season 8 - Like I mentioned earlier, there were only two things I remembered from this season (one of them being that Bree ends up with the guy played by Scott Bakula - but I probably only remember this because I loved Quantum Leap). I'll talk about the other thing later. 

Gaby's horrible and terrible excuse for a human being stepfather, Alejandro (he raped her when she was 15), comes to Fairview in the last half of season 6 to torment her. In the season 6 finale Carlos comes home to see him attacking Gaby and he kills him by hitting him with a candlestick (he was just trying to get him to stop, his intention wasn't to kill him). Bree, Susan, and Lynette enter the house right after this happened (the neighborhood was putting on a progressive dinner part and the Solis house was the last stop during this dinner party as Gaby was serving dessert and the three other ladies came early to help her set up) and they all agree they're going to help Gaby and Carlos take care of this and not say a word. 

So the four ladies and Carlos are covering up the murder of Gaby's stepfather, but Bree receives a couple letters in her mailbox indicating that someone else knows about it. I have to be honest: I had no clue who was sending the letters. There's some speculation it might be from Bree's cop boyfriend, but that's not the case. As soon as Orson shows up in an episode, I figured it was him...and I was right. It was either that episode or the next one when we find that out, but I can't take any credit for solving that mystery! 

MAJOR SPOILER UPCOMING!! (I know I already warned about spoilers, but you can never be too sure and this is a MAJOR SPOILER!!)

6. I hated that they killed off Mike - So this is the only other thing I remembered about season 8, but for some reason, I remembered it being as the very last moment of the series. Well, no, it's not. It happens about five or six episodes before the finale. I just feel so bad for Susan. And the way Mike died is so brutal and pointless: he's gunned down outside of his own home by a loan shark seeking revenge. (And the guy playing Donny, the loan shark, looks like he walked off the set of The Sopranos or Goodfellas.) If I were Susan, I would never talk to Ben or Renee again because they were indirectly involved in Mike's death. Ben is the hot new Australian guy who's just moved onto the lane (he's pretty much season 1 Mike of season 8) and Renee is the rich divorcee (she's played by Vanessa Williams who joined the series in season 7) who starts dating him. Ben has a real estate development site and turned to Donny for money, but got way deep over his head and couldn't pay the money back. Renee offered to help, but he refused. Stupidly, Renee invites Donny over to write him a check. I'm not even sure how she got his number. Now Renee is a lot smarter than that so it doesn't make sense why she wouldn't meet him in a crowded restaurant in the next town over to give him the check. Or something. Now that Donny knows where she lives, he pretty much threatens that he'll be back to get more money.

One evening while Renee is out, Mike is talking to her on the phone and he sees the light turn on in her house. He goes to inspect it because he knows Renee isn't home. Well, what do you know, it's Donny just breaking shit. Instead of calling the police, Mike gets into an altercation with him. Now he and Susan do go to the police to ask for protection, but they can only send a car to watch their house every now and then. 

Now as culpable as I think Ben and Renee are, I have to place some blame on Mike here too. I don't know why he just didn't call the police when he saw someone breaking into Renee's house. He clearly wasn't thinking about his own family which just seemed so out of character for him. This results in him getting shot, right in front of Susan and we see his life flash before his eyes (well, since the time he moved onto the lane) and we see him meeting Susan for the first time when she tells him not to eat the mac 'n cheese she brought to Mary Alice's wake. It's so sad! Susan and Mike were the OTP of this series and they were supposed to get the 360 camera angle kiss that they gave to Lynette and Tom in the penultimate episode after they were separated for the season, then got back together. 

7. The most vile character in the whole series is a 12-year-old girl - okay, maybe she's the second worst since Gaby's stepfather was pure evil...but this girl comes pretty close to being the second coming of the devil! Of course, I'm talking about Kayla, the daughter Tom recently found out he had. Before he was with Lynette he had a one-night stand with a woman named Nora (and he must have been pissed drunk because her personality is very off-putting and I don't know how anyone could stand to be with her), resulting in Kayla. 

We're introduced to Kayla and Nora in season 3. Now that all the Scavos are aware of them, they have moved to Fairview so Kayla can be closer to her dad and visit him often. After Nora is shot by by Carolyn Bigsby who is holding people in a supermarket hostage (season 3, episode 7, called "Bang"; check it out, great episode), as she lays dying in Lynette's arms, she asks her to take care of Kayla and Lynette agrees. Hoo, boy, Lynette is sure going to regret that! But how can she turn down a dying woman's wishes? 

Kayla acts like a brat at first, demanding that she be able to eat ice cream for dinner AND in front of the TV and Lynette gives in, since her mother recently died. Of course, this doesn't make her other children happy. Lynette gives her a doll that used to belong to her as something to comfort to her, but will later find it in the garbage with spaghetti sauce all over it. I felt really bad for Lynette. She was trying to do something nice for Kayla and the little brat totally disrespects that. If she didn't want the doll, fine, then just put it your closet.

When Lynette takes the kids out to dinner, Kayla is eating really slowly and when it's time to go, she tries to hurry her along and Kayla starts screaming so everyone is looking at them.

She tries to get Lynette fired when Lynette is supposed to return to work (she was shot in the arm during the supermarket hostage situation and was out of commission for awhile), but Tom needs help with the pizzeria so she lies to her boss and tells him she's not ready to come back yet. For some reason, her boss visits the house and Kayla tells him where Lynette is. 

But, wait! It gets even worse! She had convinced the twins to burn down a competitive restaurant (that's a whole other story behind that) and she also convinced them that if they jumped off the roof with an umbrella, they would be able to fly. This results in one of the twins breaking his arm. Kayla tells Lynette that if she could get the twins to do those things, then she could probably get little Penny (who's 3 or 4 at this point) to do anything. It's very ominous and Lynette's first reaction is to slap her. Even though she shouldn't have done that, I don't really blame her because this wretched pre-teen is threatening Lynette's toddler daughter. Unfortunately for Lynette, this happened while they were shopping at a mall and the slap was caught on CCTV which will come back later. 

The Scavos had hired a family counselor and Kayla calls him, telling him that Lynette had hit her and that it wasn't the first time (which was a lie). Of course the authorities find proof of this in the video footage and Lynette is arrested. Not only that, but Kayla burned herself with a curling iron, saying that Lynette did that to her. This girl is a true psychopath! Tom manipulates Kayla into telling him the truth of why she's lying about Lynette and she tells him she doesn't want Lynette living with them and we find out that Tom (who had been talking on the phone before entering Kayla's room and left the phone on her bedside table) had left the phone on and the counselor was the one listening to this entire thing. Lynette is released and Kayla is taken away, never to be seen again. Good riddance. She goes to live with her maternal grandparents. She can be their problem now! She is never mentioned again and I don't think it's ever mentioned if Tom ever visits her (I have no idea how far away she lives now). It would have been interesting if they brought her back after the time jump, but they never do.

8. Moments that made me cry - Like I mentioned earlier, this show could make me laugh as well as make me cry and here are a few of them:

-In an episode in the first season, Lynette's three sons are stealing from Mrs. McCluskey who's played by Kathryn Joosten who played Mrs. Landingham, the President's secretary in The West Wing. (Fun fact: this episode is the very first she appears in.) She makes them go over to her house to apologize to her. She's kind of seen as a cranky old lady, probably pretty scary to the three young boys! She invites them in for tea and peanut brittle. In unison, they all say, "We're sorry." There is a funny moment when she asks them their ages (the twins are 6 and Parker is 5) and when one of them asks how old she is, she makes them guess and one of the twins says, "A hundred and fifty!" This is what I'm talking about how the same scene can make me laugh AND cry. The part that made me cry is when one of the twins (I can't tell them apart, sorry!) sees a photo of a young boy on the mantel and asks, "Who's that?" We find out it's her son who died when he was twelvebecause he was sick. She begins to soften toward Lynette's sons, telling them that he was "a terror, like you three" and that they would have liked them. It's a short scene, but it's so effective and had me crying! It shows us that Mrs. McCluskey has a soft side. I actually rewatched this scene to write this and I'm crying AGAIN!

-Another episode concerning Lynette in season 1 that made me cry was when she was so overcome by taking care of her four children that she started taking one of her kids' medication used for ADD to help her, then got addicted to it. She breaks down and tells Susan and Bree how she's a failure as a mother, but they reassure she's not and that they even have times they had difficulties with their own kids. 

-Okay, I totally cried in the episode after the tornado strikes when they're pulling Lynette's family out of the wreckage. (Lynette had been separated from them, so she was anxiously waiting to see if they had survived.) Even though I knew they all survived (because it wasn't my first time watching this!), it was still pretty emotional! It is really sad when we find out that the sweet old neighbor, Ida Greenberg had died. She was good friends with Mrs. McCluskey and she just looks so devastated! 

In season three, Lynette had been battling cancer and in an episode in early season four she will find out if the cancer is gone.Her storyline this particular episode is trying to get rid of a opossum that has been rummaging around in her garden. At first, she puts a fence around her garden, but the animal just burrows under it, so she decides to go to more extreme measures. At first, this storyline is played for laughs. Parker informs her that he and his brothers have named the opossum "Scruffles" and when Lynette tells him not to give it a name "because it won't be around much longer", he is not happy that she wants to kill him. When Lynette says, "Sweetie, let me ask you something: if you had to choose between Mommy's beautiful garden or a gross, mean dirty opossum, what would you pick?" This is funny because of course we know what the kid is gonna say. He says "Scruffles" so matter-of-factly. Lynette tells him "We're done talking here." 

A couple nights later, Tom finds her in the backyard with an air rifle that Bree suggested (nothing else is working and Bree told her while the air gun won't kill it, it will sting it enough for it to want to stay away for good). Lynette seems almost obsessed with getting rid of the opossum and it soon becomes clear that the opossum is a metaphor for cancer. She tells Tom, "Something has attacked our home, and when that happens, you don't just stand by, you fight it. Screw this creature that is come into our lives uninvited and is trying to destroy us. It will not defeat me." Tom clearly knows she's referring to the cancer and tells her, "You do what you need to do."

That same night, her oncologist stops by her home because he wants to deliver this news in person because it's good news: she's cancer free. I don't know how common it is for doctors to make house calls to deliver news (even if it's good news), but it's a TV show, so I get it. Lynette walks outside, relieved. She sees the opposum, dead, and starts to break down and cry. I'm guessing the animal died from eating the poison. She said earlier that it was eating around the poison, but she must have been wrong. I don't think she ever shot it with the air rifle and she was told that even if she did, it would just scare the animal away. 

It seems like a lot of Lynette storylines make me cry! Here's one that isn't Lynette centered:

-In season six, Susan has to be on dialysis because she needs a new kidney. When there, she meets an older gentleman named Dick Barrows (Gregory Itzin), a curmudgeon who doesn't want to talk to her when she tries to be friendly. Of course, he's just scared that he's never going to get a kidney and he's been waiting for one for a long time. I feel so bad for him when a pager goes off (all the people on dialysis are carrying one; it alerts them when a kidney has been found for them) and he frantically looks at his, realizing it was someone else's pager. Just the devastated look on his face gets to me. He does soften around Susan and is happy for her when she finds out she will be getting a kidney. It's not a happy story for him since he dies and I'm just a mess of tears. 

9. West Wing fans will get a kick out of Kathryn Joosten and Lily Tomlin playing sisters - Joosten played the President's secretary for the first two season in The West Wing. When her character was, uh, no longer around, the role went to Lily Tomlin. In season five of DH, when Karen McCluskey is becoming wary of the new neighbor Dave and doesn't trust him, she asks her sister, Roberta (played by Tomlin), to help her. So if you watched The West Wing, this was a fun little Easter egg. 

10. There are many "ghosts" missing in the very last scene - I like what they went for in the very last scene of the last episode, but I don't think it was as executed as well as it could be. All the ladies have moved on to bigger and better things and Susan is the last to move. As she's leaving the neighborhood, she sees many ghosts of Wisteria Lane standing in yards. Some of these are obvious. She sees Mike, Mary Alice Young, Mrs. McCluskey, Karl. (Susan is far too young to have two dead husbands!) Then we see some ghosts that were characters that were only in one or two seasons, but made big impressions. These include George, Bree's pharmacist who had a creep obsession with her and killed her husband by giving him the wrong medication; Rex is there too (though not mingling with the ghost of George!); Nora, the woman Tom had a one night stand with and the mother of Kayla; Mama Solis, Carlo's mother who was ran over by Andrew in one of the first episodes of the show; Beth Young, the woman Paul Young was married to in season six and the daughter of Felica Tilman; Felica's sister, Martha Huber, the nosy neighbor of Wisteria Lane and who was murdered by Paul Young in the first season is there; as well as Orson's first wife who everyone thought he murdered, but he hadn't, she just died in another manner. 

Now I would say that all the people I named were characters that made a big impact on the show even if they were only in one season. However, there are a few people in this scene that if I hadn't binged watched the entire series in a couple of months, I would have no idea who they were. Hell, some of them I had to remind myself who they were because they didn't leave that much of an impression on me. These include Ellie (played by Justine Bateman) who rented a room at the Solis's in season 4 and wasn't exactly who she said she was. Because of watching all the season in close proximity, I did remember her, but that can't be said the same for Mona Clark. She was always kind of in the background, but during season six, she found out about the secret the Bolens were carrying and she blackmails them asking for money or else she'll spill their secret. She ends up being killed by the small plane that crashed into Wisteria Lane. There's also Bree's detective boyfriend who was just a blip in the final season and Katherine's elderly aunt who died of natural causes if season four. (I probably forgot about her because she was only in a few episodes and her death wasn't that crazy.) There was one guy I didn't recognize, then found out it was Carlos's boss who was stabbed by his wife. (I mean the guy's wife shot him, not Carlo's wife, Gaby!) He was cheating on her in case you were wondering. That was a crazy episode, but that story arc wasn't that long and I sort of forgot about it after the episode it happened.

Now that's a pretty good array of people who have died in or around Wisteria Lane, but there are many important people who are missing. Where is Edie? (I know Nicolette Sheridan and Marc Cherry weren't exactly on the best of terms, so that may have had something to do with it.) Where is Felicia? We have her sister and daughter, but no Felicia? Where is Ida? She may not have been as big a character as Edie or Felicia, but she was always around, a close friend of Karen McClusky's, who was a victim of the tornado, so her death was very memorable. Speaking of those who perished in the tornado, where was Victor Lang? (Probably scheduling issues since John Slattery was probably busy with Mad Men.) The point I'm trying to make is that scene could have had a lot more impact.

11. The Real Housewives franchise was heavily influenced by this show - The first episode of the reality series debuted in March 2006 while DH was in its second season and very popular. Now I love Desperate Housewives, but have never seen any episode from the Real Housewives series. I have no desire to. But then again, I have no interest in candid reality. I've never seen an episode of Keeping Up with the Kardashians either and I feel pretty good about that! It's just amusing that a show I absolutely have no desire to watch was inspired by a show I love. 

Can you become, can you become a new version of you

I just watched Felicity for the first time and wanted to share some thoughts/bullet points. This was a show that would have been perfect for me to watch when it aired from 1998-2002 on the WB, especially since I'm the same age as the protagonist, but while I was well aware of it, I never watched it...until recently. Now, I watched J.J. Abrams' other shows, Alias and Lost, but never this one. Yes, Felicity was created by J.J. Abrhams (and Matt Reeves). Which is so weird. This show is so different from Alias or Lost. 

Keri Russell plays Felicity Porter, a girl who has just graduated high school in Palo Alto, California. Her parents want her to go to college at Stamford and become a doctor. She decides she's going to follow her crush, Ben Covington (Scott Speedman) across the entire country to attend UNY (University of New York; not to be confused with NYU, which is a real school). She has never talked to Ben, but gets up the nerve to ask him to sign her yearbook and he writes that he wished he had known her better which makes her think that he likes her. Or something. She finds out where he's going to college and ends up there too. Now, if the genders had been switched, that would have been a little problematic. Although, it is still stalkerish behavior that she followed a boy to college.

Once there, she makes some new friends, including her RA, Noel Crane (Scott Foley), which turns romantic and soon there will be a love triangle between her, Ben, and Noel. And there's some other drama, of course. This show ran for four years...one for each year of Felicity's journey though college. And now onto my thoughts. Also, I'm going into this as thought you're familiar with the show. If you've never seen this show and don't want to be spoiled, maybe don't read this:

1. Who is Sally? - As a narrative device, the show has Felicity send taped messages (yes, with a cassette tape; way to show your age, show!) to her French tutor, a woman named Sally Reardon. Pardon, mais Felicity ne parle pas francais! We never meet Sally, but she does send Felicity her own recordings and she is voiced by Janeane Garofalo. Sally must be a very trusted confidant because Felicity sends some of her most intimate and personal thoughts to her. Like, Sally had a lot of dirt on her! There's one particular episode where she makes a tape for Sally where she tells her what she wonder what it will like to be with a man for the first time, physically and sexually. It's so cringe. Well, guess what? There's a dorm party happening that night and somebody asks her if she has any tapes they can play at the party and she shows them where her music is (I guess she was distracted) and somehow her tape to Sally was mixed in with her regular tapes and that person (I forget who it was) grabs it, thinking it's a mixed taped? I guess. I just thought of something: why are these people playing and listening to cassette tapes? In the late '90s, I was listening to CDs. I can understand why Felicity was using the tapes to record her messages to Sally, but as for listening to music? Were we not able to burn CDs back then? I honestly don't remember. Anyway, surprise, surprise, the tape is played and everyone hears her highly embarrassing message. She shouts for someone to turn it off, but nobody does. So she just runs up and rips it out of the tape deck. Honestly, Felicity. If you have a cassette with a very personal recording on it, maybe don't keep it with your other tapes! 

Anyway, back to Sally. I really thought we were going to meet her, perhaps in the last season, but no, we never do. In fact, it seems like after season 2, they pretty much drop Sally as a narrative device, but they do bring her back for some of the last episodes of the series, like they forget about her, then realized that maybe they should have Felicity corresponding with her again. IDK, I personally thought they should have just had Keri Russell narrate the show as Felicity. 

2. What's in the box? - Felicity's roommate is a girl named Megan who's into Wicca and she's very opinionated and isn't afraid to tell you what she thinks of you. I would describe her style as "club goth". She and Felicity are very different people and she doesn't particularly like Felicity the first two seasons, but by the end of the series, they are good friends. Anyway, Megan has a box (about the size of shoebox) and she makes it clear to Felicity in several episodes that she is never, ever to open the box. I thought for sure we were going to get a great reveal of finding out what was in the box whether it was in the last episode of season 1 or the last episode of the whole series. But we never find out what was in the damn box! Ugh! I wanted to know. Was it drugs? Was it a gun? Was it a severed finger? Was it a sex toy? Was it embezzled money? Was it a compromising video? Was it Gwyneth Paltrow's head? Honestly, none of those would have surprised me. I was just disappointed we never find out what was in the box. "What's in the box?!?!" 

3. My two least favorite storylines are back-to back - Ugh, yes. This came in season 3 which is probably why it took me a long time to finish that season because there were times when I would go weeks without watching an episode because these two back-to-back storylines just seemed to make the show drag on forever. So a quick set-up: we are introduced to a new character at the beginning of season 3: a British girl named Molly who makes her own clothes and is into crystals and charms or something. IDK; honestly, I could care less about this character. I felt like she added absolutely nothing to to the show and was unnecessary; I didn't get the point of her. She's only in 14 episodes which surprised me. I guess they brought her in to replace Julie who leaves towards the beginning of season 3. Felicity, Julie, Molly, and Elena all live in this ridiculous huge apartment. Actually, I was always confused who was living where and with who at certain times because it always seemed to change. I need to see if I can find a chart to help me with that. 

Anyway, back to the topic. Right after Julie leaves, we're about to start on the first of my most hated storylines of the show. So Felicity actually moves into this massive apartment after Julie leaves and takes her old room. She finds COCAINE in the closet! I'm thinking, Ooh! This is getting good! Who do the drugs belong to? Were they Julie's? She's got a lot on her plate concerning some drama with her biological parents that she recently found. Or perhaps they're Ben's? He's dating Felicity and staying over at the massive apartment lately now. He's got his own drama and stress to deal with. Or does it belong to one of the other roommates? Well, yes...and no. The drugs belong to Molly, but really they belong to her boyfriend, James. Who the f is James is what I asked when I first heard about him. We have never seen or heard from this "James." And for a minute I thought maybe Molly was making him up and that would have been interesting, but no, he really exists and we see him on the show and they pretty much act like he's been there the entire time. We go through this whole boring storyline where Molly is trying to quit James and the cocaine, but everytime she thinks she is done, he pulls her back in! This storyline pivots right into the next storyline I hate because while there's a party going on at the massive apartment, here comes James and he's got a gun! I guess he plans to shoot Molly? Or himself in front of Molly? IDK. But he ends up shooting some random blonde girl named Avery, and ugh, would it be in bad taste to say I wished she had stayed dead? Calm down, let's all remember she's a fictional character. Yes, Avery technically dies, but she will be brought back to life in the ambulance and Ben is there to witness it all. Avery becomes obsessed with Ben and starts buying him all these gifts and invites him to her family's beach house. Or something. (She comes from a rich family). And OMG, it is soooooo boring. Felicity, rightly, is not happy about this arrangement, but Ben tells her nothing's going on. Okay, he may believe that, but it's so obvious Avery is trying to get between the two of them. This storyline is never ending and I really wished Avery had died because she's so boring. I don't even care that much about Ben and Felicity as a couple, I was kind of hoping she would break them up, but nope. Oh, sure, they have their fights, but in the end they stay together. Finally, she just goes away. Hallelujah. 

4. Ben vs Noel - So before I watched this series, I knew there was a love triangle with Felicity, Ben, and Noel. However, I was just thinking she would alternate between the two of them. Thinking back, that seems kind of weird and I don't know why I would think that. I guess I thought her time spent romantically with them would be even, but it's not. At all. She dates Noel when she's a freshman and he's a sophomore, but that is the only time she dates him. She starts dating Ben at the beginning of second season after she goes on a road trip with him during their summer after freshman year. They don't date too long as there is a little hiccup, but then they get together towards the end of the second season and they're pretty much together for the rest of the series. That isn't to say there aren't any obstacles, but there are. Obviously, Avery, is one. Another huge one is that Felicity sleeps with Noel at the beginning of season four. Felicity is stressed out because her dad doesn't support her wanting to study art and thinks she should be a doctor, Ben is stressed out because he's decided he wants to be a doctor (which to me, makes no sense, but it's a storyline, so whatever). Anyway, Felicity seeks comfort with Noel and they sleep together...she keeps it a secret from Ben even though Richard, Elena, Javier and her school therapist all know about it. (The first two are accidental, but she tells Javier and her therapist about it). I really thought Javier was going to spill the beans, but it's actually f*cking Noel who does. Good job, Noel. So, of course Ben is pissed and they break up....but they end up getting back together towards the end of the series. But not before Ben sleeps with a woman who his dad is an AA sponsor for. She is a little older than him (she is played by Lisa Edelstein aka Dr. Cuddy from House) and she ends up getting pregnant. She keeps it a secret from Ben for months so he's already back with Felicity when she tells him. At first, Ben doesn't want anything to do with the baby, but then he changes his mind when he realizes how crappy his own dad was, so he wants to be there for his child. The only (only? ha!) wrinkle is that Lauren is moving to Arizona where her parents live and there's already a job lined up for her. Actually, let me hold that thought because a lot of this takes place in the finale which is a separate point I want to talk about.

But back to Ben vs Noel, I honestly didn't really care who she ended up with. Hell, a part of me was hoping she would end up with Owen the art student (but not really cuz I knew it would never happen). If I were forced to choose, I would say Noel. I just think there was more potential there for a relationship, they always just seemed to have a stronger bond and Ben just seemed to be more distant. To be fair, I'm sure there would have been lots of drama with Felicity and Noel if they dated for a couple of years. Also, I find it unrealistic that this so-called nerdy girl followed the coolest and most popular boy from her high school (I honestly feel like Felicity would have been more popular than Ben, but whatever) and ended up with him. I feel like it would have been better if she had ended up with Noel. Like, she did intend to end up with Ben, but in the end, she found someone better and ended up with him. It almost ends tied up in a neat bow. 

5. The finale - So back to the whole Ben/Felicity/Lauren/impending baby of it all. Ben proposes to Felicity and she says yes. Then he decides he wants to move to Arizona to be closer to his son when he's born. So the proposal is called off. Felicity is not staying in New York, but instead will be returning home to Palo Alto where she will attend classes there to become a doctor. At UNY, she decided to change her major to art, but then after she graduates, she decides to be a doctor, after all. What a way to waste your time, Felicity. Oh, well, I suppose that is realistic. Sometimes you think you want to be one thing, but then realize it's unrealistic or won't take you very far in life, so you go with the more grounded choice. 

At the very end of the show, with a "Six months later" text added to the screen, Felicity is outside one of her classes and guess who comes up from behind and taps her on the shoulder? Why, it's Ben! You see, he convinced Lauren to pack up all her things and move with their baby to Palo Alto when she had a job and a support system in Arizona. Seriously, WTF, Ben? It's fine that you want to move because you want to be closer to Felicity, but why are you making your baby mama do the same thing? I found the part that Lauren and her new baby followed him was a bit unrealistic, but whatever. So Ben and Felicity go on to be doctors and live happily ever after. Whoo hoo a whoppity dee doo.

But wait....I lied. That was NOT the finale. It SHOULD have been the finale. It was MEANT to be the finale (I believe), but there are still FIVE episodes left! Apparently, this is because the network needed a certain number of episodes and they were five short when they submitted the show that was meant to be the finale, so there are five more episodes and they are absolutely bonkers and insane...and we'll get to that in my next bullet point. 

6. Time Travel - Yes, you read that right. I am not sh*thing you. This show, which is grounded in reality, actually has Felicity time travel. Good f*cking lord. I don't think they even time traveled in Buffy and that show dealt with supernatural stuff all the time! 

So here's the deal: Felicity tells us how happy she is with Ben in Palo Alto. Back in New York, Noel is getting married to some girl he works with (him dating her was a boring storyline in the last season). They're supposed to go there for his wedding. But before that, two things happen, one of them pretty tragic. Apparently Elena died in a car accident when she was on her way to Columbia for med school...I'm sorry, what? Why? What was the point of killing her off? Well, it will make sense later...but it also won't. The other thing is that Felicity and Ben have made friends with a girl (I don't remember her name) in their classes and Felicity catches them MAKING OUT in the effing school library. WTF is wrong with Ben? And then later we will learn that he's been doing this for a "few months". Seriously, WTF, Ben? Ben SUCKS. He effing moved to effing California to be closer to his effing gf and this is what he effing does to her? And they STILL (spoiler alert!) end up together. Ugh! Ha! I guess I'm more Team Noel than I thought.

Okay, so remember how I told you how Megan (her roommate turned good friend) is into Wicca? Well, she's dabbled in a few spells including one where she wants to make Felicity clumsy (I forget why; just to be mean, I guess) and a love spell for Felicity and Ben after Ben finds out about her sleeping with Noel. Well, both spells technically work. Felicity is clumsy and she and Ben do sleep together, but they won't get back together until later. But at least these were things that could happen in real life...whether or not a spell helped them along or not. Felicity is telling Megan that she wished she had ended up with Noel after they slept together instead of going back to Ben and Megan tells her she knows a spell for that and performs it, but Felicity just goes to sleep....and when she wakes up she's on the roof where she and Noel slept together and this is right after it happened. Okay, first of all, maybe go back before you cheat on your boyfriend so you can at least break up with him, then tell Noel how you feel. She already knows that Noel has feelings for her. But she pretty much confesses to Ben right away what happened and wants to break up with him, then tells Noel she broke up with Ben and wants to get with him. Noel is (rightly) freaked out by this and claims she's acting weird which she IS. They do start dating, but he runs into his old girlfriend, Hannah (played by Jennifer Garner...this is when Alias was first airing, so they must have taken a week off from filming that) and they start getting chummy again. A little too chummy that I actually thought that in the "real" timeline, she was the one he was getting married to (but it's not her). 

She sees Elena and gets all freaked out and happy that she's alive and of course Elena has no idea why she's acting so weird. She confesses to both Ben and Noel that she's from the future, but of course they don't believe her....UNTIL she tells Ben that his dad is going to end up in the hospital and other stuff that he wouldn't know yet and sure enough it happens so he believes her. In the back of my mind, I kept telling myself there was an explanation for all this, like surely this wasn't happening. It was all just a dream or Felicity was tripping' something big. The most hilarious part was that she told Megan about the spell she performed and Megan has no idea what she was talking about and even she didn't believe her!

The finale (the actual finale) is a f*cking clip show. Oh, you have no idea how ANGRY and LIVID clip shows make me! I despise them with a passion! They're so pointless and dumb! I bet 45 minutes of the show was from previous episodes! The new stuff has Felicity talking to the author of the time travel spell that Megan performed. The book isn't written yet, but somehow they find out the guy who will write it...so she goes to visit him and he believes her and tries to help her, pretty much by revising her past and this is why we get a clip show for the finale. I think this is why (I'm assuming) most people just ignore all the episodes after the one where they graduate because that one feels like the finale and the rest of it is just stupid BS! 

In the "real" timeline, there was a fire at the school and Felicity gets trapped in the art room and Noel helps her escape. Well, in this parallel timeline, the fire still happens, only Noel dies in the fire! Which makes no sense because Felicity wasn't even there for him to save! So what was he doing that he died? I'm so confused! 

Okay, so anyway, in one of the last scenes, Felicity wakes up in her bed in the "real" timeline and apparently she had a big fever and dreamt all of this. So I was thinking, Oh, so it was all just a dream (a long-ass dream!) and this never happened. I'm still trying to rationalize all this. Because Felicity is a rational show and there should be no reason why time travel exists in its universe! And I'm saying this as someone who loves time travel sh*t!  But then we see everyone at Noel's wedding (the very last scene) and Elena is there! I was so confused because in this timeline, she should be dead...so why is she there? So I went on Reddit which directed me a clip on YouTube where J.J. Abrahams says there's a deleted scene (and it is shown) where in the timeline where Felicity goes back in time, she tells Elena to go to med school at Duke instead of her first choice, Columbia. This is because Elena dies in a car accident on her way to Colombia. I mean, you can get into a car accident anywhere, but whatever. She makes Elena promise her that she'll go to Duke...which Elena does which explains why she's still alive. I mean, they couldn't put this scene in the actual show instead of the 45 minutes of clips we've already seen of this show? Dumb. Also, this means that Felicity really DID time travel, thus the reason Elena is alive when she goes back to the "real" timeline. This show...ugh....if only the stupid network (WB) had just let them end on the episode where they graduated. Let them air static at nine pm on Mondays for the next five weeks! (I don't even know what day/time Felicity aired). 

7. Guest Stars - John Ritter had a recurring role as Ben's dad. I already mentioned Jennifer Garner played Noel's girlfriend. (She was in a few episodes in the first season, then came back towards the end of the series. And yes, I do know she was married to Scott Foley for a minute). Although this was before she had Alias, so she wasn't famous yet, so I guess she was really the guest star in the last season. 

Donald Faison would show up pretty often in the first three season, though he wasn't a main cast member. He played Elena's boyfriend. They were pretty serious and almost get married towards the end, but don't go through with it. There's this whole storyline where his character is going to Africa to help with missionary work. Please! He wasn't going to Africa; he was going to start filming Scrubs!

In the first season, Julie has a storyline where she's trying to find her birth mom (she's adopted and has never searched for her birth parents until now) and she does. She's played by Jane Kaczmarek and I'm thinking, Okay Malcolm in the Middle is going to start in filming in a year so they're going to have to wrap up her storyline. She's in a few episodes in the first season and just a handful in the second. Julie wants to meet her father, but her mom hasn't told him about her (I forget why), so she follows her to a restaurant and sees them dining. He's played by Bradley Whitford (yes, I do know he and Jane are married IRL) and he's only in that episode. This is because he was probably filming The West Wing by then. 

Tyra Banks and Keenan Thompson both had about a 4-5 episode arcs in season 3 (not at the same time, though). Noel was trying to date Tyra's character, but he was being a real creep about it. He first meets her because he's a tech guy and she needs help with her computer, so he does that. While he's fixing her computer, he sees her password out in the open (not very smart of her to do that), and he uses that to open her emails to find out stuff about her. Yeah, not cool, Noel. With Keenan, he plays a character who helps Elena while she's temporarily blind (I forget why she couldn't see) and she likes him and agrees to go out with him. Then when she sees that he's overweight, she's not as enthused. Finally, she gets over that and does find out she likes him, but this is when Donald Faison comes back for a little bit and she tells Keenan's character she's going back to her former boyfriend. 

Lionel Richie was a guest star on one episode. I love Lionel Richie, but it was so totally random and he doesn't even get to sing. Javier and Noel are going to Atlantic City to see him in concert. Only they don't have tickets and they're all sold out (well, duh). But they do talk to him when they're in the bathroom. IDK, if you're going to approach a celebrity, maybe not do it in a bathroom. Also, I don't know how it works, but I would guess celebrity performers would have access to a private bathroom if they were performing at a large venue. 

8. The Haircut - I didn't watch Felicity in real time, but even I was aware when Keri Russell cut her hair and all the uproar it received. This happened at the very beginning of the second season. Looks, it's just hair and it will grow back, but I have to agree it wasn't the most flattering. People with curly hair should not get their hair cut that short! I know because when I was younger, I had super curly hair and got it cut pretty short. Luckily, this happened the summer after first grade and not when I was in high school or college. But even at the young age, I knew I looked horrible and I still cringe when I look at photos of that time. Once her hair starts growing back, it looks much better. Honestly, if they wanted Felicity to get a drastic change, they should have just had her hair straightened. Duh. That's what they do in the last season...all of a sudden her hair is straightened.

9. Dean & DeLuca - Over the series, Felicity and Ben work at this coffeeshop. And this is a real place. Usually, they don't use real coffee shops in shows. Think Central Perk or Cafe Nervosa. I have heard of Dean & DeLuca, but I have never been to one, so I did some research. 

....a few moments later....

Okay, I'm confused. From the research Googling I've done, it appears D&D was an upscale grocery store? Huh? On the show, it's a little cafe that sells coffee and snacks like brownies. So did the show make it a coffee shop and it's a grocery store in real life? Also, looks like they closed their stores a few years ago.

10. All the cheating - There's a lot of cheating that goes on in this show. First, we have the cheating of people in relationships: Felicity cheats on Ben with Noel, Elena cheats on Donald Faison with her hot neighbor, Ben cheats on Felicity with that girl at their new school towards the end, and I'm sure there's other examples I'm missing. But there's also academic cheating. In the first season, Ben and Felicity are working on a paper and since his computer is acting up, she offered to spell check it for him and bring it to him to their class tomorrow. Well, she ends up more than spellchecking it...she rewrites a few passages! She rewrites enough that the teacher is suspicious and knows Ben didn't write this and therefore gets accused of not writing his own paper which is technically true. I don't know what Felicity was thinking.

Then, in the last season, Felicity has to write a paper for her art history class which will count for a big chunk of her grade. Because of all the drama that's been going on in her life, she hasn't even started on it and it's due, in like, two days. Megan suggests she just go to the library and find and copy a dissertation that a graduate student wrote on a topic about art. Felicity tells her she'll get caught if she does that and Megan assures her she knows other students have done it before and never got caught (mostly cause they denied it!).  She also tells her that nobody ever reads the dissertations so they'll never know. Now I would agree with Megan because those things look long and boring, but you would think her art history teacher would be familiar with any of those dissertations. (BTW, I forgot to mention in the guest stars section, her art history teacher is played by Jane Lynch. She wears very conservative skirts and blouses, so a far cry from Sue Sylvester!) Felicity ends up copying a 30 page dissertation and turning it in as her own. The next day the teacher wants to talk to her and Felicity is scared. The teacher tells her it's the best paper she's read and she wants her to present it to the school board to be published. Ha! I knew that was going to happen! In the end, Felicity confesses before it goes too far and she gets an F on the assignment, but is still able to pass the course and thus graduates. 

Bonus - The technology - Since this show takes place between 1998-2002, the technology is quite different! First of all, nobody has a cell phone in this which is really weird. Also, everyone uses this type of Mac: 

Haha, remember those? I never had one...I didn't get my first Mac until 2009. But they look so bulky compared to the Mac computers of today! I do like the different colors you can choose from, though.

Well that's my review (and some rants!) about Felicity. That reminds me: I need to finish watching The Americans.